Halloween Fireballs: How to See the Taurid Meteors

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The Taurid meteors, sometimes called the "Halloween fireballs,"
show up each year between mid-October and mid-November, but Nov.
5 to 12 will likely be the best time to look for them this year,
based on their peak of activity and the effect of moonlight on
viewing conditions.

Initially, on Nov. 5 the moon will be very bright in the gibbous
phase, but it will diminish in brightness with each passing
night. Before the moon rises — around 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 5, and
about 55 minutes later on subsequent nights — some 10 to 15
meteors may appear per hour. They are often yellowish-orange and,
as meteors go, appear to move rather slowly.

The name of this
meteor shower comes from the way they seem to radiate from
the constellation Taurus, the Bull, which sits low in the east a
couple of hours after sundown and is almost directly overhead by
around 1:30 a.m. local time.

Meteors, popularly referred to as "shooting stars," are generated
when debris enters and burns up in Earth's atmosphere. In the
case of the Taurids, they are attributed to debris left behind by

Encke's
Comet, or perhaps by a much larger comet, which, upon
disintegrating, left Encke and a lot of other rubble in its wake.

Indeed, the Taurid debris stream contains noticeably larger
fragments than those shed by other comets, which is why in
certain years — and 2012 is predicted to be one — this rather
elderly meteor stream occasionally delivers a few unusually
bright meteors known as "fireballs." [ Amazing
Perseid Meteor Shower Photos of 2012 ]

The Taurids are actually divided into the Northern Taurids and
the Southern Taurids.

This is an example of what happens to a meteor stream when it
grows old. Even at the beginning, the particles could not have
been moving in exactly the same orbit as their parent comet;
their slight divergence accumulates with time.

Meanwhile the sun is not the only body gravitationally
controlling the particles' orbits; the planets are having subtle
effects on the stream as well. As the positions of the planets
are constantly changing, the particles pass nearer to them on
some revolutions than others, diverting parts of the stream,
fanning it out and splitting it. Ultimately, what was originally
one stream diffuses into a cloud of minor streams and isolated
particles in individual orbits, crossing Earth's orbit at yet
more widely scattered times of the year and coming from more
scattered directions until they are entirely stirred into the
general haze of dust in the solar system.

Dr. Victor Clube, an English astrophysicistand an expert on
comets and cosmology, indicated back in 1992 that the Taurid
meteor stream contains perhaps a half a dozen full-size asteroids
whose orbits place them squarely in the stream.

Clube and his colleagues argue that the Taurids' range of orbits
indicates they were all shed by a huge comet, originally 100
miles across or more, that entered the inner solar system some
20,000 years ago. By 10,000 years ago it was parched and
brittle. Encke's Comet might actually be the biggest leftover
chunk of the
parent comet.

Another fireball year?

Encke's has the shortest known orbital period for a comet, taking
only 3.3 years to make one complete trip around the sun. Meteor
expert David Asher has also discovered that Earth can
periodically encounter swarms of larger particles in certain
years, and 2012 is predicted to be one of those years.

Maximum rates for the southern branch occur near Nov. 5, while
the northern branch peaks near Nov. 12. This year the moon
is somewhat unfavorable during the first week of November, but
the northern Taurids peak the day before new moon when the sky
will be dark.

The meteor showers' two radiants (the points where meteors appear
to originate in the sky) lie just south of the Pleiades star
cluster. During the next couple of weeks, if you see a bright,
slightly tinted orange meteor sliding rather lazily away from
that famous little smudge of stars, you can feel sure it is a
Taurid.

The year 2005 was a swarm year, with many exceptional fireballs
seen, especially along the U.S. East Coast on Halloween evening
(Oct. 31), when fireballs as bright as the full moon were
witnessed.

Will 2012 offer a repeat performance? Only by going out and
viewing this display will we know for sure!

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of the 2012 Taurid
meteor shower and want to share it with SPACE.com, send photos,
comments and location info to SPACE.com managing editor Tariq
Malik at: tmalik@space.com.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New
York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New
York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera
meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.